Bryony Gordon is a feature writer for the Daily Telegraph. She has worked for the Telegraph (on and off) since 2000 and has lived in London all her life.

Searching for a man in a van

You may remember that I blogged a while ago about my quest to find a new flat. Well I have found one, and this weekend I moved in.

Moving house can be a tricky business

I was going to spend the whole of last week packing, so that when Saturday morning came I would be organised and ready to leave my crumbling north London flat for my shiny new west London one.

But (social) events conspired against me and so it was that at 9am on Saturday I found myself frantically stuffing things into bin bags, wondering why I couldn't make life easier for myself by being a bit more organised, and knowing full well that it's because being organised is not as fun as going out with my friends.

Anyway, at 9.30am it struck me that I would need a way to transport said bin bags to the new flat, and that the bus was not going to be the best way to do this (I don't drive). So I spent the rest of the morning trying to track down a man with a van.

"I'm going to have to charge you double because you haven't given me much notice," said the only available man with a van in the entire M25 area, knowing that I would have no choice but to agree with him. The man with the van continued to take the piss by arriving two hours late and then refusing to lift anything.

Fortunately, the one piece of forward planning I had done was to book the help of a male friend to lift things. Unfortunately, it being the day of the Cup Final, the only male willing to help was my gay friend Tony, who spent much of the day screeching at me for haphazardly throwing things into bin bags and not packing them neatly in boxes.

"Honestly, Bryony," he lamented. "You're just going to have to iron all your clothes again."

I didn't have the heart to tell him that I don't actually own an iron.

Later, as we surveyed everything packed into the back of the van – the man who owned the van tutting because he "needed to get on" – Tony turned to me and sighed. "That's a bit tragic, isn't it?"

"What's a bit tragic?"

"The fact that your life fits into 16 bin bags and four boxes." The man with the van sniggered unkindly.

So anyway, I am moved now and unpacked (didn't take long) and it is jolly nice. My last place was falling apart and horrible and I never wanted to go back to it. Maybe now, with a cosy flat to go home to, I might even start to get organised.

PS Thanks for all your tips on giving up smoking. Will keep you up to date with my progress.